Online Shop: According to the US National Retail Federation, Christmas sales in 2019 were over 728 billion. The three most significant risks for the IT infrastructure and how companies with their online shop can best prepare for them.
Online Shop: More And More Database Types And Data Silos
The database environment is becoming more and more differentiated. At the same time, companies with online shops are increasingly relying on different databases in different locations. This results in an ever-increasing number of data silos. According to Gate point Research, 58 per cent of the companies surveyed complain about extensive data silos in their IT architecture. However, this makes it challenging to keep track of all instances, making the risk of data leaks higher than ever. The complicated data structures also make data inflexible – up-to-datedness, and redundancy, which are particularly important for the Christmas business, can hardly be guaranteed.
The goal of data management must therefore be a uniform database to reduce complexity. This should ensure a uniform, transparent scheme for applications, but it should also run on every public and private cloud and be distributed over several clouds. This leads to shortened IT maintenance cycles and fewer data silos, thus simplifying operations, especially at peak times.
Digital Changes Are Still Untested
A survey carried out by Data tax shows that 62 per cent of the companies surveyed have already moved part or all of their workload to the cloud, the majority of which only last year. Before Christmas, the peak loads for IT often hit the new infrastructures without a previous, extensive test phase – from the webs hop and order system to mobile systems for customers to modern applications.
The lack of testing poses a significant risk: According to the survey, over half of IT decision-makers are concerned that the physical and digital touchpoints are not up to the peak loads in the online shop. The underlying databases are also affected. A distributed, asterless database architecture independent of all cloud options can provide a remedy here, compensate for possible weaknesses in the infrastructure and prevent points of failure.
High Demand At Certain Times
When it comes to Christmas shopping, as on other peak days, the trend is increasingly towards last-minute shopping. The concentration on certain days in online and stationary retail leads to short-term peak loads of unknown levels and extreme demands on the IT infrastructure. This is problematic because, according to a study by Google, 53 per cent of potential buyers leave an online shop if it is not fully loaded after three seconds.
An optimal customer experience is crucial for business because a negative customer experience does not only have a short-term impact on sales – 14 percent of customers buy more if their experience is positive. On the other hand, negative experiences affect brand perception and customer loyalty in the long term. Companies need to be able to meet these top requirements without loss of performance and in real-time.
Online Shop: Advantages Of A Scalable Database Architecture
A highly scalable approach in the database architecture has two main advantages: On the one hand, it manages peak loads by scaling horizontally, simply adding other nodes and running in every cloud. On the other hand, with a peer-to-peer architecture, requests can be forwarded to another database node in the event of a server failure. This guarantees agility, flexibility and high availability in sensitive times, even on unproven cloud infrastructures.
Even if peak times in online shopping are a challenge for companies, IT departments have to cope with them. Companies are asked to prepare their IT infrastructure for the peak requirements at an early stage. In this way, they ensure that they can meet customer expectations and thus not record any losses but benefit from the customers’ pre-Christmas shopping spree.
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